


and if we rise, my love

by pentaghastly



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: F/M, and i feel god in this fanfic tonight, anyways geralt and yennefer are soulmates so jot that shit down, lets get to the part in the series with the stuffed unicorn already, this is fluff. also i took liberties w their reunion clearly but allow me this............
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22439710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: And Yennefer, perhaps better than anyone, understands wanting.(It appears that Geralt of Rivia does too.)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 11
Kudos: 204





	and if we rise, my love

**Author's Note:**

> they're soft, karen

.

> _I’m speaking about love now  
>  How the lights of love go down  
>  You’re in the back room washing his clothes  
>  Love’s like that you know  
>  It’s like a tidal flow  
>  And the past with its fierce undertow  
>  Won’t ever let us go._  
> 

Yennefer is immensely familiar with what it means to _want_.

Her and wanting are old friends. The feeling had haunted her dreams for as long as she could remember, claws digging across her stomach lining - a desperate craving to love, and be loved in return. It wasn’t too much to ask, she thought. It was only human, Yennefer was sure, to experience longing.

But her longing was different. 

It did not take a shape. It did not have a face, or if it did the face always changed; sometimes it was a man, all in black, and sometimes it was a young girl clinging to her skirts. Sometimes it was her hand, her hand in someone else’s. But if it did not take a shape she did not think that it mattered so much, as the importance was less in how it was represented than what it was that was being represented as a whole. She may have been ugly, may have been weak, may have been vile and wretched and cursed, but Yennefer understands dreams. Yennefer understands destiny.

Yennefer understands what it means to _want_.

She understands it just as well as she understands what it means to be unwanted.

“What do you want?" He asks her. "Anything in the world, if you name it it shall be yours”

What is the little lordling’s name? Yen can’t remember, which she thinks must mean that it does not matter in the slightest. All men are the same, anyways. All men share the same hungry look, have the same selfish hands, the same black sludge running through their veins. They all share the same desperation to take what is hers and hers alone - her dignity, her freedom, her power. 

They do not fool her. Yennefer has been weak, and Yennefer has been vile, wretched, cursed, but let it never be said that Yennefer of Vengerberg has been foolish. Let it never be said that Yennefer of Vengerberg has allowed a man to make a fool of her. Let it never be said that she has ever seen them as anything more than they are.

Flesh and blood, each equally malleable, each equally soft.

What could she possibly want from him?

_Money. Influence. Power. Safety. Security. Power._

_To want. To be wanted.._

_A home._

“Nothing,” she says, after a moment. Her voice is a bit rough, but Yennefer knows that his small mind, pathetic and desperate as it is, will read the rasp behind her words as raw attraction rather than emotions that she would rather not confront. “I have never wanted for anything other than this.” 

Yennefer knows what it means to want.

She understands it very well.

.

And Yennefer has been thinking a lot about time, lately.

Jumping through it. Falling behind it. Running out of it - limitless, ages bounds of it, never once laying a finger upon her features. So many women fear time; so many women who have been told that they are worth nothing more, trapped by their laws and the men that claim them, women who know that once their time is up they will have nothing left but the bitter taste it has left in its wake. Time rushes forward, pace building as the years continue to pass, and yet it’s calloused hands do not seem to even brush against her cheek. Not even once, but yet -

Her time is coming, still.

She’s certain of it.

.

It does come, of course.

Eventually.

It comes in the shape of a man, if that is what one can call Geralt of Rivia. A man is, no doubt, what he is, and yet somehow the word does not seem to be enough for him. It feels too… _tight_ upon his frame, too restrictive, not because he is a mutant but because he seems to exceed every boundary that she has ever known to entrap his kind. Mankind. 

Perhaps he has come here for her. Perhaps she is his next contract, the next creature on his ever-dwindling list. 

He won’t succeed, but Yennefer would like to see him try. There isn’t a doubt in her mind, at least, that he would certainly do better than the others. After all, it has always been said that only a monster can hunt a monster.

She has heard stories of him, enough that might fill their own anthology had she time to write them down. Everyone has heard the tales of The Butcher of Blaviken, The White Wolf, the beast that roams the wilds and haunts many a peasant child’s dreams. He certainly doesn’t look such a beast now, Yennefer thinks. He may not look a man, but in a black linen shirt carrying a pitcher of apple juice he hardly even looks a Witcher. It’s only the eyes that give him up, burning brighter than any man that she has ever known, but Yennefer will not look away. She is sure it is what he wants, but she will not allow him that.

“I thought you would have fangs, or horns or something.” 

“I had them filed down.” 

Is that a smile? It must be, or at least a furtive attempt at hiding one. She laughs, only slightly more genuine than she had intended; she has heard stories of Geralt of Rivia, but not in one of them had he ever made a joke. It’s surprises her, in the most pleasant sort of way.

Yennefer takes a step closer, and she sees it - he _inhales_ , only slightly, but it is not subtle enough to escape her notice. His pupils dilate, he swallows, and she understands. _Ah_ , she thinks, _perhaps more of a man than he lets on._ You could tear humanity out of a human, it seemed, but could not pry from them their want.

And Yennefer, perhaps better than anyone, understands wanting. 

It appears that Geralt of Rivia does too. 

.

She wakes up in the morning, in that shitty old house and every morning thereafter, and there’s only one thing that she’s searching for. 

It’s those eyes.

It’s always those _fucking_ eyes.

.

He breathes into the crook of her neck, ragged and desperate, _in_ instead of _out_. Geralt always does this after they’ve slept together, fucked or whatever it is that they’re doing: he offers a shaky inhale, despite the fact that he has more stamina than anyone she has ever known and she’s positive that he isn’t out of breath. Maybe she will ask him about it one day, Yennefer thinks, but probably not. 

“I’ve missed you,” he says, after only a moment, and the child that remains inside her is almost foolish enough to believe him. 

“ _Please_. Each time you turn your back for but a moment, Jaskier takes it upon himself to regale me with stories of the peasant wenches and their _ardent_ gratitude for your heroic services.”

She can feel him frowning against her skin. A shame, Yennefer thinks, for Geralt is always at his least attractive when his face is tugged into a scowl. Still, in fairness, that does not change the fact that he’s still infinitely more attractive than anyone she has ever known, man or otherwise. If he’d had a flaw, anything similar to the one that she had, Yen has yet to discover it. 

“And you believe him? Jaskier is a dick.” 

“Careful, darling. He’s your best friend. Your _only_ friend, I might add.” 

They’re silent for a moment, and in this moment Yennefer allows him to hold her. This will be over soon, she knows, and so she will permit it to last for as long as it can. She hadn’t appreciated it enough, the first time it had occurred back in that dreadful old house, and in all the times that they have found one another since she has not been so foolish as to make the same mistake. Yen is a proud woman and she will not ask, will not _beg_ a man to stay - but when he is there, calloused hands running over the curve of her hip, she will not let a moment slip through her grasp.

“Are we not friends, Yennefer?” 

He’s teasing. This is yet another thing about Geralt that has surprised her - he so dearly loves to tease, far more than she ever thought a Witcher might. 

His hands drifts ever lower, and she allows it. 

“We’re barely even acquaintances.” Yen knows that his mutant’s hearing can pick up on her thundering heart, but any attempts to slow it are overshadowed by the glide of his fingers. “In fact, I think that very strange business partners might be more accurate.”

Geralt laughs. “And what sort of business would you call this?” 

Those eyes flicker up to hers, golden as any sunset, softer and brighter and warmer than any fire she’s ever laid before. Yennefer wonders if it might be possible to drown in them. Perhaps this is how the Witcher kills her, finally tames the beast; perhaps, and though she would not go quietly Yennefer thinks that there would be worse ways to leave this world. One could only be so lucky as to die feeling safe, feeling loved.

Gods, she is a fool indeed. 

“I’m not yet sure,” she says, and perhaps she would be embarrassed by the slight tremble in her voice if she was not sure that his did not contain the same, and if his hands weren’t doing what they were, “but what I _do_ know is that I’m not being paid nearly enough for it.” 

He laughs again, and Yennefer catches the sound with her lips.

She does not want to hear it again.

She can’t.

.

Destiny, naturally, has other plans.

Yennefer burns. She _burns_ , and destiny determines it is not her time.

( _Fuck destiny_.)

.

When she heals, when it is all over and she no longer aches like she did before, she searches for him.

The rumors say that he travels with a young girl. A child. Yennefer tries to ignore the way that news tugs at her chest; his child surprise, she’s sure, and a little wisp of a thing if the gossip is to believed. A little wisp of a thing, and something very dangerous, and something in much danger.

It is not hard to picture Geralt as a father. This had shocked her at first, but the image comes naturally as anything. It’s those eyes, she’s sure of it, the eyes that contain such warmth and love for someone who is not meant to have any emotions at all. Or perhaps it is his smile, the secret one that he provides when he’s sure that nobody other than it’s intended recipient is looking - or, in all fairness, it might simply be that she has known Geralt to be capable of love, has _felt_ it all for herself.

And if he could love a monster, how could he not love a child? 

The rumors take her to Ellander, to the Temple of Melitele, to the sort of sanctuary that does not seem to fit as a Witcher’s home. She overs on the edge of the gates for a while, uncertain as to whether she should take a step further. Would it be an insult, she wonders, to set foot into the home of the Goddess of Fertility after all that she has done?

It comes for her from beyond the gates, drifting gently in the wind: it is a laugh, and then two, one belonging to a child and the other to the man that she loves.

 _Fuck destiny_ , she thinks, _and fuck the Gods._

All Yennefer of Vengerberg has ever wanted is to be her own.

.

“Tell me what you want, Yen.”

Geralt does not demand. Geralt _asks_ , gentle but yearning, wanting but kind. Geralt asks with his face pressed to her neck, breathing desperate, as if trying to memorize her scent lest she disappear come morning. He does not take, and he does not offer - he _asks_ , kind, and he awaits the answer without assuming what it is that she will provide.

Cirilla calls her Yen, Mother, _Mama_.

She rises each morning, and the first thing that she sees - perhaps not literally, but the first thing that she cares enough to remember - is those eyes.

“Tell me what it is that you want, Yennefer,” he says, pressing a kiss to her shoulder, the faintest stubble bruising her skin along with his smile, “because you’ve left me feeling quite generous, and at this moment I feel inclined to offer you anything in the world.”

Yennefer tugs him closer to her, close enough that she can hear his mutant’s heart and the way that it beats - slow, impossibly slow, but faster than she had thought it capable of. So fast that it might almost be mistaken of the heartbeat of a man, and the thought is enough to allow a startled burst of laughter from her lips.

“I want everything,” she tells him, for Yennefer is immensely familiar with what it means to _want_.

“I want everything,” she repeats, “and I need nothing other than this.” 

(Fuck destiny.

Yennefer of Vengerberg makes her own.).

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos mean the world xxxxxxx


End file.
